On The Stroll
It’s very early in the morning and I’m sitting here, cup of tea in hand, enjoying the peace and quiet. Two of the cats are sitting very, very still, staring fixedly and pointedly at the shelf where the food is, willing me to feed them. I can hear the green parakeets that’ve taken up residence in the trees along the gardens (there’re hundreds of them in the local park , close your eyes and you’d think you’re in the outback) whooping like car alarms and trilling ringtones at each other. Not quite the dawn chorus you’d expect in Europe, but hey, globalisation is for birds too.
This’ll probably be my only post today as we’re off to the Albert Cuyp Markt to do some shopping, then early dinner in one of the areas many and various small restaurants, after that a movie, V for Vendetta, hurrah, which opens today in Amsterdam. The Albert Cuyp is, to my mind, Amsterdam’s best market for a foodie ( the Noordermarkt is great for organic, but doesn’t have the sheer range of produce) and it’s a always a pleasure to just spend a few hours wandering about looking at weird fish, cheap housewares, shoes and exotic herbs and spices.
Except there’s something that is bound to spoil it, something that I was reminded of by Simon Hoggart in this mornings Grauniad:
I have written before about the size of baby buggies, some of which are now bigger than prams. Except that nobody tried to get prams on to buses, or trains, or expected to push them round shops. The other day I was buying food in M&S, and a man pushing a vast single buggy, literally as wide as the aisle, with pouches, several bulgy wheels such as you might find on an articulated lorry, and a roof, so that it looked like the surrey with the fringe on top, only longer and wider, came up to me and patiently waited for me to stop what I was doing and go back out of the aisle, like a visitor to the Highlands intimidated by locals into reversing half a mile down a single track road, even though there was a passing place 20 feet in the other direction.
The whole point about a buggy, as opposed to a pram, is that it can be folded up. But most parents can’t be bothered to do that, since it would be like trying to assemble an Ikea wardrobe, only in reverse. Three of them were manhandled on to a bus I caught the other day; one was actually a double decker buggy, so at least it was only four feet wide instead of eight. Even so it was almost impossible for anyone to get on or off the bus.
Catch a bus? Are you kidding? Simon, don’t you know these people never use buses? Buses are for those losers, the poor. UK and US baby Buggies are made to fit the back of a 4 x 4 driven by smug, middle-class marrieds in their mid-thirties who’d never in their life consider using public transport. Someone might see them. The shame.
Besides, it’s not a buggy anymore, or a pram. Those are for pushing to Asda on child benefit day. No, what the au courant bourgeois baby must have is an Integrated Infant Transport System. One can’t be seen at arriving at Tumble Tots in anything else, my dear.
Where the US & UK go, the Netherlands invariably follows. Amsterdammers do like to keep up, and a big buggy is a must-have status symbol for new parents. The trouble is, people here actually do use public transport, regardless of class, and a buggy the size of a tank is a major impediment on a tram . I mean, look at the size of the bloody things:
And that’s without all the accessories – the covers and the footmuff and the baskets and the shopping bag and the tray underneath and the expansion kit…which are really only a cunning marketing ploy aimed at the modern, involved father. I guess the marketeers think that if a man must be seen publicly pushing a stroller, it’s damned well going to look big and tough and macho, so that’s the strollers that get made and bought. That’s why McLaren is both a best selling brand of stroller and a Formula 1 racing team. I’m amazed that manufacturers don’t make a turbo kit especially for new Dads, or a Humvee buggy, or at the very least halogen headlamps, go faster stripes, and an onboard Ipod docking station.
It wasn’t until I started googling for pictures I realised that baby buggies are an irritation to a lot of people. Not just because of the greedy, all round smugness of the parents pushing them, running over your feet and getting in the way, but because they’re being used as mobile playpens for older children who really shouldn’t be in them at all, as Terry Prone points out in the Irish Examiner :
Now, if the Supersize Me buggy had evolved just to ensure baby safety, that would be fine. But these buggies did not so evolve. Supersized baby buggies are the containment pond of paediatric management. Almost every chemical company has a containment pond. It sits, down-hill from the plant, waiting for the day when something spills or overflows. On that day, the containment pond gets its break. Becomes a hero. Captures all the toxic stuff and prevents it getting into the water supply where it might turn us all luminous or force us to shower in bottled water.
A containment pond literally contains the problem. Ditto the baby buggy.
Strap a child into one and you can take it to the shopping mall without the fear that it will run around, climb steps, knock things down or fall over; all the useful developmental things toddlers want to do because they help children learn the world around them, explore danger and cope with consequences. Buggies prevent all that and, because they?re low on the ground, obviate toddlers seeing a lot of stuff they might want to explore. They are the perfect mobile containment pond for children, delivering immeasurable benefits for the adults involved.
One of the benefits for adults is fitness. Those buggies that come to a single-wheel point at the front which have over-sized wheels and a suspension system a Beamer might envy, were first sold as Jogger Buggies.
The selling proposition was that parents could do their three-mile run while pushing the baby ahead of them. The buggies even had cute little gadgets to hold the parent?s ginseng-saturated fitness-water within reach.
Now, you don?t see many owners of these SUVs actually jogging, but you do see thousands of these vehicles being bought every year. The buggy now rivals the old pram in size, elaborate carrying-capacity and cost.
But then expense is no object when it comes to purchasing a child-vehicle. Each parent is persuaded that nothing is too good for their baby, so if their baby buggy costs e300, that isn?t an issue.
Except that ?baby buggy? is the wrong name, these days. Call it a Toddler Buggy. Indeed, if the trend continues, a couple of years down the road, we?ll be calling it a Primary School-goer Buggy.
When my two boys were toddlers the refused to go in the buggy, they wanted to walk, so I put them on reins. It says a lot about the passivity of today’s children that they are content to be strapped in to such a late age. Though sometimes it’s probably good they’re strapped in, notably when there are multiple siblings to transport. That brings the hell on wheels that is the the double, or even triple buggy. Yes, I know twins and triplets are difficult and a trial and a joy all at once, and transport must be incredibly difficult – believe me, I do see the necessity, and parents shouldn’t be trapped at home. But is it really necessary to force one of these behemoths into a narrow, medieval street crowded with market stalls and shoppers or a narrow supermarket aisle or a tiny public toilet? Would they drive an articulated truck down an alley? No, that would be silly. So why do they persist in forcing there way in everywhere, even when it’s patently a physical impossibility? Parents – please, look at the buggy, look at the space, look at the crowd – then go home and get a babysitter, ot take turns.
But on the other hand, if you can’t get a buggy in somewhere, that also means you probably can’t get a wheelchair in either. I’m much more concerned about that than I am about poor old put-upon parents getting their pampered offspring in anywhere they feel like going.
I’ve noticed that NL is a very bad country for disabled access, even though there are many disabled people here, judging by the numbers of invalid carriages on the bike lanes. There are very few wide entrances or aisles or lifts, and the railways and buses are, surprisingly, the worst of all. I can’t say I’ve seen a ‘lowering’ bus since I’ve been here, there are difficult steps up onto all the trains and as for accessible public conveniences, they just don’t exist. For a country so fixated on individual rights it’s a strange oversight. The UK is much better in this regard – we do at least have the Disability Discrimination Act, which obliges all service providers and businesses to ensure disabled acess for workers and customers, although it hasn’t been implemented as widely as one would like.
The downside to that is that anywhere that’s wheel chair accessible is giant-buggy accessible too. You can’t win.
Read more: Parenting Children Disability Transport Netherlands Amsterdam
